From changes to teacher evaluation to the inner workings of the teachers’ unions, reporter Madeline Will keeps you up to date on the biggest issues shaping the teaching profession today.

Like half of Washington, D.C., I'm stuck at the airport waiting for a flight. Being the teacher-policy nerd that I am, here are a few items that have caught my attention as I've been scanning the news this morning. • The Detroit teacher contract was ratified by a 63 percent yea vote. Now everyone there can start dealing with all the other issues, like horrible scores on the NAEP and a new rubber room and the structure of performance-pay, peer-assistance, and peer-review programs. • Mathematica Policy Research has won a contract to evaluate the Teacher Incentive Program sites. (TIF, you'll...

• Apparently the contract under consideration in Detroit would create its own version of New York City's infamous "rubber rooms." • For an up-close look at the effects of central-office hiring processes, seniority provisions and working conditions, check out Emily Alpert's terrific three-part series in the Voice of San Diego. • Michele McNeil gives some Race to the Top application pointers over at Politics K-12. Finally, I'm heading back to Californ-eye-ay for some time with my family next week, so posting will probably be relatively light. Happy holidays from me and the Education Week team....

To follow my previous post on the MOUs that states are beginning to create for their Race to the Top applications, it's quite interesting that some states are giving their teachers' unions seemingly much more leverage over whether or not the district will actually participate. Some states, like Colorado, are using the Education Department's model MOU wholesale. (It is in the appendix of the application). That one makes no reference to collective bargaining at all. Then there's Massachusetts' MOU, which adds this language: "Nothing in this MOU shall be construed to override any rights or duties as provided by collective ...

At the Center for American Progress, Raegen T. Miller, a policy expert (and former teachers'-union leader, natch) has an interesting paper up about "value-added" measures of teacher effectiveness. He has two major points: The term value-added itself, which comes from economics, is objectionable to some teachers. It probably needs to be changed reflect that teachers contribute to their practices in ways other than boosting test scores, and that the test scores themselves pick up factors outside of a teacher's control, he writes. He suggests the term "context adjusted achievement test effects" as an alternative. Second, systems that seek to incorporate ...

Detroit schools' emergency financial manager Robert Bobb and teachers' union leader Keith Johnson have agreed to a tentative contract for the district that contains a lot of New Haven-like reforms. Given that, you'd be forgiven for wondering why the American Federation of Teachers isn't promoting the heck out of it. Well, as this Detroit Free Press story explains, it's not clear whether or not the union membership will actually ratify it. And that comes down to plain ol' bread and butter issues, not the new reform proposals. Given the district's dire financial straights, teachers wouldn't get raises for the next ...